Articles by Rob Buckley

About Rob Buckley
I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.
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Monday’s musical Ghost news

9 March 2009 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Doctor Who

Awards

Film

  • Tracy Morgan and Martin Lawrence among those joining Death at a Funeral
  • Julia Roberts to produce Jesus Henry Christ
  • Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss to star opposite SJP and Hugh Grant in Did Your Hear About The Morgans?
  • Nick Nolte and Jennifer Morrison to star in mixed martial arts film Warrior

Theatre

British TV

US TV

Welsh TV

Review: A Mind to Kill – series one

6 March 2009 Rob Buckley 11 Comments

A Mind To Kill

You wouldn’t know it from the BFI’s celebration of 25 years of Channel 4 and S4C, but S4C does in fact produce television programmes, some of them quite good. Have a look at Caerdydd. Go on. It’s good.

But it would be a mistake to think this is a recent development. A case in point is A Mind to Kill, Wales’ answer to Taggart. Starring Welsh man-god Philip Madoc as widower Detective Inspector Noel Bain, A Mind to Kill was a dark and gritty 1991 TV movie about neo-Nazis set and filmed in South Wales.

Shot in both English and Welsh – as (Noson) yr Heliwr (which, I think means either The Night Hunter or Hunter in the Night. Anyone?) – the film, the charismatic Bain and the series format proved popular enough that a series of sequel films was made, running for five series from 1994 to 2004 – even making the transition to the rest of the UK by airing on Five. Yet almost nobody remembers it.

Praise be, then, the first series is being released on DVD by Network on March 16th.

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US TV

Season finale: Burn Notice (season 2.5)

6 March 2009 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Burn Notice season 2.5 finale

There’s been a marked “treading water” quality about Burn Notice. On the one hand, Burn Notice is very, very good when it’s dealing with spy stuff; but when it’s all that tedious “person in distress” stuff, it’s really very boring – having all the mystery of whether the nuclear-bomb grade spy skills of Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) really can take out the small tea hut that is the usual criminal-of-the-week.

The spy stuff for the last few seasons has come from the series’ big question: why was Michael fired from his spy job? I don’t know. He doesn’t know. He’s been looking for ages and to stretch that plot out, they’ve been filling up episodes with tedious “person in distress” episodes that make me want to yawn. We’ve even had guest rapper episodes. Not good.

Fortunately, though, we’ve found out the answer to that question. Yes, we’ve found out. Sort of. And it looks like the hatches are being battened down for a third (or is that fourth?) season of mostly spy hijinks. Thank God for that.

Oh, some spoilers ahead, so watch out.

Continue reading “Season finale: Burn Notice (season 2.5)”

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who: Key 2 Time – The Judgement of Isskar

6 March 2009 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

The Judgement of IsskarBrace yourself. This is the first of a three-part season (that’s already had a prequel) called the Key 2 Time.  

Ouch.

Its slightly unpleasant name comes from the fact it’s a sequel to the Tom Baker season-long story the Key to Time, in which Tombo and new companion Romana (Mary Tamm) went searching for something called the Key to Time, said object having the power to stop all of time if reassembled from its six component segments – just enough no-time, in fact, for the White Guardian, a universal force of goodness (or should that be order), to readjust the balance of the cosmos to stop his opposite number, the Black Guardian, from getting too powerful.

Unfortunately, each segment was disguised as something else, ranging from a rock to a human being (Lalla Ward), and the only way to find the segments, scattered all through space and time, was with a magic Geiger-countery wand called a Tracer.

With me so far?

Okay, the Key 2 Time (urgh) sees the Fifth Doctor (who got to meet the Guardians again for a trilogy of stories during the 20th season) once more having to go looking for the segments of the Key to Time, this time with the help of a living Tracer called Amy – and the hindrance of her sister Zara.

First port of call: Mars and the Ice Warriors.

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who: Key 2 Time – The Judgement of Isskar”